The 2008 Prelude Festival, which is “at the forefront of contemporary NYC theatre and performance” is but one month away. It’s got an unreal lineup this year including Richard Foreman, The Builders Association, Big Art Group, NTUSA, and Banana Bag and Bodice just to name a few. I am not prepared. What to do when procrastination and creator’s block kicks me in the teeth? Post it online. No excuses and public humility are sure to torque me into doing, doing, doing. I’ll be documenting my progress here of the new work I am creating called “CHN01″ as a way to stimulate and catalyze my progress. From the Prelude ’08 website, “CHN01 is an experiment. Andrew performs “the television” using his body and custom-made wearable electronics.” Yikes, I proposed that?

Ararahgghhgegrhgrhghr. I don’t know what to think. These two articles have just been called to my attention. Christian Lorentzen wrote the feature “Why the hipster must die” in Time Out New York / Issue 609, in May of 2007. Douglas Haddow wrote the essay, “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization” in issue 79 of Adbusters which hit the stands just last week. Both articles beat down the fashionatic tendencies of the supposed “subculture” of the Hipster. In traditional Adbusters style, Haddow declares the end is nigh while typing poetic verses describing the Hipster set dance-shuffling the entire human race into oblivion. Lorentzen is a bit less dramatic and seems legitimately fearful for the death of New York Cool and those that are supposed to be the ones on the front lines of cultural innovation. He even invites the defense of the Hipster from those institutions and publications who cater to the little rascals. The vapid “cultural” blog, Down By the Hipster, in an invited retort, writes,

To us, hipsters are more than just people that dress in odd outfits and like to party. Hipsters are interested in the new, and because they are interested in the new, they help to spur innovation. Mainly in art, music and nightlife. It may not be innovation to most people, but that is why they are not hipsters. By the Pythagorean theorem, this means that they in fact do not ruin everything because if hipsters did not exist, a lot of what the masses come to enjoy would not exist either. It’s kind of like if Marty McFly didn’t get his parents to kiss in Back to the Future.

While I appreciate the reference to one of my all time favorite movies, this defense is nonsense. Lorentzen writes, “The e-mails arrive, and though it is known in advance that the art will be nothing much,the trek is made. The avant-garde illusion ultimately sustains itself on free beer.” I want to scream, YYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! What is this crap that I’m doing? Why do people come see me perform? Why do I go to see other people perform? Why is any of it good? Why do people show up in droves to see The Wooster Group or something put on at The Box?

Haddow goes on to state,

Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global vision of fashion-informed aesthetics. Loosely associated with some form of creative output, they attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke parties. The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits, usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice, Another Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the hipster almost universally loathed.

Is this why I care about this? I no longer know if I am what I parody. I no longer know parody. Irony can no longer exist. I am becoming most of the things that I am hyper-critical of, maybe because I am hyper-critical of them. I try to get in there and understand the stuff of culture. The only way to truly understand is to subscribe and lose yourself in it.

I am also nagged by the thought that this is a very trite thing to worry about. I do however seriously entertain the notion that culture drives culture and that the social undercurrents of the L.E.S. do in some way have ramifications outside of fashion mags. Again, Haddow, with post-apocalyptic sentiment,

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

That is what I am afraid of. We are fantastic recyclers of ourselves. But there is no longer any fodder for the mill of ourselves. We are documentation of no content. Focus relentlessly on content rather than what we think is demanding technique.

We are fashion of thought. We live to excessorize.

Everyone can, and should, be ignored. We were warned about this situation we find ourselves in by philosophers, and well before it happened. It’s just too bad we weren’t warned by celebrities, or we would have listened to them.

Hey all, I’m participating in a one-day project at my old grad-school called 5-in-5. The kids do 5 projects in 5 days. Read more about it here. I decided to do something really stupid. Check that out here.

Last minute posting: I’ll be performing an impromptu piece tonight at The Tank as part of Scale of Sound as curated by the wonderful Leslie Flanagan. I’ll be dancing silently with a stranger. I go on around 11PM. $5.oo cover. You should come! From the description:

Amplification is magnification. Using voice, feedback installations, live soldering, piccolo, modular synths, photography, musical instruments and more, performers will play with amplification to change our perception of sound. Big sound, little sound, and everything in between.

For those of you who came to see my “performance” last week at LEMURplex (to whom I owe you that $5 cover charge), I am delighted to be able to show you some of what should have happened. Out of context at least. Marlon Barrios Solano over at dance-tech.net was nice enough to conduct an interview with me about the stuff I do. He’s got some documentation from the actual LEMUR show and I’ve also sent him some rehearsal stuff I shot so you can at least get a sense of what never happened. The video is below

I’ve skipped town for New Orleans this week, but if you haven’t, then I hope you are enjoying the beautiful weather and…May I suggest going for a walk in Central Park? Maybe buying some roasted peaunuts from a street vendor? Or even possibly riding your bike to a gallery or two? If you decide to do any of the above, may I suggest swinging by Wook & Lattuada gallery on 36th steet between 5th and 6th Avenue. Michael Delgaudio and I are a part of a group show there called BLUE CHIPS. We’ve installed an interactive piece called SingleChannel. The opening, (which I’ll have to miss) is this Tuesday, May 13th from 6 – 8 PM. I’m not sure who the other artists are or what they are showing, but you might as well go for the free wine, Michael’s company, and the most expensive and complicated light bulb in Manhattan. More information below:

It’s the end of April, which means my time with the musical robots of LEMURplex is at an end. To celebrate I’m saving the last dance for THIS FRIDAY NIGHT May 2nd at 8:00 PM at LEMURplex in Brooklyn. I’ll be performing some disjointed technopromtendobluesical numbers and telling a tale of love, life, and loss, which together make up the work in love progress called ALLMYPERFORMANCEAREBELONGTOYOU1ø>3 is a Work in Progress. It’s a triptych quadtych really. To those interested, the set list includes songs by Mungo Jerry, The Bangles, and STYX, just to name a few. Here’s a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny preview:

It’s all going down at LEMURplex in Brooklyn on 3rd Ave. between 9th and 10th Streets: (map) Bar Tano is a hip joint right next door that were bound to grab a drink at after the show so come even if you come late.

more info below.

Take the F/M/R to 4th Ave. and walk one block down either 9th or 10th St. to 3rd Ave. LEMURplex is on 3rd Ave. between 9th & 10th Sts. Or, take the F/G to Smith & 9th Sts. and walk two blocks up 9th. Cross and then turn right onto 3rd Ave.

April ReSiDeNt show: Friday, May 2ndFeaturing new works by Dafna Naphtali, Andrew Schneider and Simon Morris
Dafna Naphtali is a sound-artist and improviser-composer from an eclectic musical background. As singer/guitarist/electronic-musician she performs and composes using custom sound processing of voice and other instruments. Besides her composing and improvised projects, she co-leads the digital chamber punk ensemble What is it Like to be a Bat? with Kitty Brazelton (http://www.whatbat.org) and has collaborated/performed with Lukas Ligeti, David First, Joshua Fried, Ras Moshe, Alexander Waterman, Kathleen Supové and Hans Tammen, among others and done sound design and programming for Jin Hi Kim, Shelley Hirsch, Pamela Z, Phoebe Legere, Fred Frith, Jim Staley, Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, Chico Freeman and others. Dafna can be heard with Mechanique(s) on a forthcoming release on In-situ, and was featured vocalist on José Halac’s CD “Dance of 1000 Heads” (Tellus), as well as on her acclaimed release with What is it Like to be a Bat? on Tzadik/Oracles.
Dafna’s residency will involve dynamically controlled algorithmic improvisation and live audio processing, using vocal cues and controls to trigger and manipulate LEMUR robots.
Andrew Schneider is a multimedia designer and performer whose work investigates human/technological interdependence. He is the co-founder and Associate Artistic Director of the Chicago-based theatre company, BigPictureGroup. His solo performance work has been seen at P.S.122, Monkeytown, The Prelude Festival, and The Tank. His multimedia devices have been featured in Art Review, Wired, TimeOut NY, Maker Faire, SIGGRAPH, Dorkbot, the Telfair Art Museum, and at the Center Pompidou in Paris. His Solar Bikini has been featured internationally and is slated to be featured in the next Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. His latest projects include Experimental Devices for Performance (.com) and Acting Stranger (.com). Andrew Holds a Masters Degree in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU. He is currently working with The Wooster Group. (http://andrewjs.com)
Doing musical theatre with robots used to be Andrew’s standard joke answer to the question “So what do you want to do with your life?” Finally, a life-long dream comes true. He plans to start with a dance number, interfacing his movements with the robots via custom-built wearable controllers.
Born in New York City, Simon Morris (US/France) is a new media artist exploring urban landscapes, new musical interfaces and skateboarding. Investigating new forms of musical expression, his work examines technology and its role as a socially engaged art practice. He has conducted live performances at Eyebeam, NYC, the Article Biennale 2006 in Stavanger, Norway, the KiasmaMuseum in Helsinki, Finland and the Barker Theatre in Turku, Finland.
Simon is planning an interactive musical performance orchestrated by the movements of three skateboards.